This is an excellent achievement. The current educational climate is one in which it is very challenging for schools to obtain one of the top grades. Almost everything has to be impressive; results, behaviour, leadership and teaching. You will see from the comments in the report that we are strong in all of these areas.

The areas that have been highlighted as needing to improve were not news to us and were already part of our 3 year development plan. Rest assured we are already (as the report acknowledges) and will continue to work hard to improve these areas.

On the day before Ofsted arrived I called an impromptu full school assembly where I informed pupils that we were to be inspected. I told them that Abraham Darby is their school and to show the inspectors how good we are. Our pupils responded. Perhaps my favourite sentence from the report is:

“An ethos of high expectations permeates everything that the academy does and creates an environment where students work hard, behave well and develop into rounded young people”.